The trip odometer in my '86 300E will not reset although it shows advancing miles as I drive. While changing the dash lighting bulbs, I thought I'd try to see what was wrong with the trip odometer. I knew it wasn't a slipping gear problem since the trip odometer did advance as I drove.
I found that a pot metal lever boken off. This lever was supposed to push, through a linkage, against a black plastic part which, in turn moved the numbers on the trip odometer to zero.
Question 1: Is there any chance that I or a speedometer repair shop could find a replacement pot metel lever for a 20 year old car?
Question 2: If I start looking for a used speedometer, what year and model MBZs will have speedometers which will work correctly in my 300E?
Tips:
1. On the black plastic part mentioned above, these is a spring steel part with several fingers projecting. It is these fingers which contact the odometer rollers and which roll them back to zero. This spring steel part broke off of the black plastic part and the number rollers would not reset to zero evenly when I did the reset manually. This gave the familiar clicking sound with the trip odometer failing to advance. I was able to reattach the metal part to the plastic part with MBWeld. Then when I manually moved the reset, the numbers smoothly went to zero, no more ticking sound.
If you are experiencing the clicking sound and the trip odometer reset will not move the number rollers until they are even, Take the speedometer out and look to see if the spring metal part has come loose. Also possibly that pot metal lever has broken. These parts are easily seen at the rear bottom of the speedometer when it is out of the cluster and the white plastic cover is removed.
2. I had the instrument cluster in and out twice. If you spread a little wax (I used Johnson's floor wax) on the four rubber pieces whch fit into the clips in the dash, the cluster will pull out more easily the next time.
I can live without a trip odometer but I like to have everything working on my cars.
